Thursday September 8th - Cell structure / Function as well as making our own live and active cultures!!!

Today was an interesting one for sure!!!  We started off with the following daily questions:

The first questions was about the relative size of prokaryotic cells vs the other three organisms which would consist of eukaryotic cells.

I also mentioned that this specific bacteria is found in most yogurt and is proven to be GOOD for us!!   There is so much misconception about bacteria being "bad" or "Gross" when in fact we DEPEND on certain bacteria for a healthy digestive tract!!!

 The second question was all about that key concept about how the surface area to volume ratio is so important for biological process.

FINALLY......  the third question was pretty straight forward in terms of the fact that it is focusing on the Structure function relationship.  To properly show this....  I used animal organs as a demonstration.  Each of these different organs have VERY different functions.  What ALLOWS for that?!?!?!  Well..... the fact that the cells that make up the tissue that make up the organs have VERY different structures...........  Each cell / organ is going to have very different functions!!

THEN we got into some even more fun stuff.  Since it is nearly impossible to see a single bacterial cell without a very high powered microscope, I wanted to somehow make this all "real" to you.  Today you had the opportunity to swab different places around the room / school and see what kind of bacteria we can grow!You won't be able to see any of the bacteria you collected today since prokarytotic cells are so small.  We placed them in an incubator that is set to body temperature to allow the bacteria to grow and reproduce.  When we come back tomorrow, any colonies we see are the result of MILLIONS of bacteria that have populated out of a SINGLE  bacteria captured.  You guys came up with some pretty cool places to swab and I'm looking forward to seeing what we come up with tomorrow!!!